414 methods. The lack of educated and experienced personnel was a difficult problem to remedy given the short period of preparation allowed for the reforms, but the most serious obstacle to a successful implementation of the administrative reforms lay in another area. The structure of the Swedish administration was strictly hierarchical, and each level of the structure could operate successfully only if the level immediately below it also functioned according to its instructions. The whole system was based on a specific social infrastructure that had emerged from a long historical development; not only did the Sw'edish local administration require the cooperation of a free peasant class, but its smooth operation was entirely dependent upon a cameral system that was an integral and necessary part of the administrative method. If the Swedish administrative experience were to be reproduced in another country, Swedish legal principles concerning real estate and its taxation would also have to be copied. The link between the local administrative system and the cameral system would have to be maintained if a loan of the Swedish administrative system were to have the intended effect. But the legal status of the Russian peasantry, that of serfdom, was entirely different from that of the free Swedish peasantry, and this fact was reflected in the way the Swedish local administration was emulated in Russia. The Russians decided, for example, to eliminate the lowest, or parish level, of the Swedish local administration, in which peasant representatives took an active part, and the Russian peasants were not allowed to participate in the administration of justice, as was the case in Sweden. On the contrary, when it came to judiciary procedure, the Russian estate owners exercised complete and exclusive jurisdiction over their serfs. One can see fromthe Russian collegial instructions, and especially from those for the kamer-kollegiia and the shtats-kontor-kollegiia, that the Russian reformers were aware of the connection between the cameral system and the operation of the local administration. Nonetheless, nothing was done to change the Russian cameral system, since neither the political nor the social prerequisites existed for such a thorough restructuring of Russian society. As a result, the Russian local administration was unable to develop methods of operation corresponding to those of its Swedish prototype, and this in turn detracted from the ability of the colleges to carry out their various responsibilities. When the accounts to be submitted by the local administrative organs failed to materialize, the colleges, too, found it impossible to operate according to the manner prescribed in their instructions. Against this background, it is impossible to agree fully with the thesis prevalent among Soviet historians that the use of the Swedish administrative system as a prototype for the Russian reforms was generally
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